Workshop in Yoruba Dance Tradition – Ridwan Rasheed

Ridwan Rasheed’s Dance Workshop is inspired by the Yoruba dance vocabulary. Through movements drawn from the Yoruba dance tradition, it reconstructs approaches to movement by experimenting with rhythms, techniques, fusions, and indigenous embodiment within contemporary patterns. The workshop brings inherited dance vocabularies into contact with an exploratory contemporary movement practice.

Rather than presenting tradition as a fixed form, the workshop uses its movements and rhythms as material for experimentation. Participants explore the relationship between technique, rhythmic organization, and embodiment, while testing how these elements can be rearticulated through contemporary patterns. The focus remains on movement as a means of conveying, transforming, and sharing a vocabulary.

Ridwan Rasheed is a Nigerian contemporary dancer, choreographer, and researcher from Lagos, with ancestral roots in Oyo State. He divides his time between Berlin and Lagos. His practice bridges Yoruba Bata dance traditions and contemporary performance, incorporating critical theory and experimental forms.